Hi.. I've only recently started enjoying FLAC recordings. I'm trying to find the Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos recorded by Vladimir Ashkenazy. I've found these short samples (miles ahead of my cherished CD in audio quality) but nowhere to follow up and purchase. Is anyone else familiar with these recordings and might be able to point me in the right direction? I know I'm a newcomer -- is this the appropriate forum to ask this question? If not, I apologize.

Hi... thanks for the replies. These seem to be links to CDs. I already have the CDs (have enjoyed for years) and was looking for the high quality FLAC (now that I can appreciate the improvement). If I've missed something in one of these links, please let me know. The one from France seems not to be available where I am in Canada (not sure why).

Hi... thanks for the replies. These seem to be links to CDs. I already have the CDs (have enjoyed for years) and was looking for the high quality FLAC (now that I can appreciate the improvement). If I've missed something in one of these links, please let me know. The one from France seems not to be available where I am in Canada (not sure why).

What makes you believe that the flacs are sourced from anything else than the cds? How have you tested that you hear a difference? Placebo?

Hi... thanks for the replies. These seem to be links to CDs. I already have the CDs (have enjoyed for years) and was looking for the high quality FLAC (now that I can appreciate the improvement). If I've missed something in one of these links, please let me know. The one from France seems not to be available where I am in Canada (not sure why).

What makes you believe that the flacs are sourced from anything else than the cds? How have you tested that you hear a difference? Placebo?

New to this forum and not wanting to start a flame discussion, but I've listened to some FLACs sourced from tapes for which I have the actual CD. I do have good D/A, powered monitors and a treated listening environment, and I can assure you that to my ears and anyone else I drag into my listening room to listen to both versions of these particular materials, it's like the veil was lifted. Stunning. So I want more of my favorite stuff...

That said, if the source is the CD, then of course the FLAC is useless, so you bring up a good point.

Assuming you have Windows, you can do a bitwise comparison if you accurately rip the CD and load that rip and the FLAC into foobar2000 playlist, right click, Utilities, Bit-compare tracks.

If there's a difference in the data, the again from the Utilities menu you can do an level-matched ABX text (a form of Blind Test) to randomly assign A or B to X and the other to Y, say 10 times, play them and identify which matches X.

Nearly all of us here on these forums have been surprised that some difference that sounded like a veil being lifted when we knew the source, became impossible to discern when it was hidden from us and we couldn't pick up subtle cues from a friend switching cables over either.

It's quite humbling to realise how much our perception - what we actually experience in our hearing - can be so affected by our expectations as well as the actual auditory input.

Another thing most sound engineers have done is tweak a setting like EQ to perfect the sound then discover that the EQ was bypassed the whole time and there was no possibility of there being a difference between the different settings they were convinced sounded different. (Sometimes moving your head in the listening room is enough to change the sound genuinely, thanks to room effects like comb filtering, sometimes it's pure imagination and Expectation Bias)

I'm not trying to be a smart-ass but the samples on that website are mp3 samples. Not flac. So whatever you perceived as better quality is not. If the source is not different from the cds. Which seem unlikely with the cover of the cd right next to it and the samples with "cd sample rate" as David pointed out.